Katina Powell Claims She Hired Her Own Daughters As Escorts For Louisville Basketball Recruits

Katina Powell, a self-proclaimed 43-year-old madam, claims she hired her own daughters as escorts to service University of Louisville basketball players and recruits in a deal with a basketball staff member.

The allegations came to light when Katina Powell penned a book, Breaking Cardinal Rules: Basketball and the Escort Queen, with the help of journalist Dick Cady. Powell claims former Louisville staffer Andre McGee hired and paid Powell for her services. Those services included bringing escorts to dance, strip, and entertain recruits and players at Billy Minardi Hall and other off-campus locations, according to Yahoo! Sports. After this type of entertainment, Katina alleges another agreed-upon amount of money was paid for the escorts to have sex with the recruits, the recruits’ fathers, and the players.

At those parties, high-school recruits were served alcohol by McGee, Powell says.

Katina Powell admitted in the book that she did the unthinkable as a parent. Katina Powell claims she hired her own daughters as escorts.

These transactions between Katina Powell, the escorts, and the basketball team occurred over a period of four years, Powell claims. Powell recalls sexual escapades at 22 parties for the Louisville team, according to Indianapolis Business Journal.

In the book, Katina claims she felt like she was an integral part of the team because she spent so much time with the basketball team.

“At the peak of the dormitory and off-campus entertainment more than $10,000 cash changed hands to Katina for supplying the women. This does not include the hundreds of one dollar bills thrown at the dancers at each party by McGee, the recruits and players. Nor does it include the money paid to the women who had sex with the recruits afterward. So frequent were the escapades that Katina would later say, especially after the Cardinals won the 2012-2013 NCAA championship: I felt like I was part of the recruitment team. A lot of them players went to Louisville because of me.”

McGee left the University of Louisville in 2014 for an assistant coaching job at the University of Missouri at Kansas City.

The book does contain pictures of Powell and other dancers with McGee and high school recruits and basketball players.

According to Larry Brown Sports, McGee’s attorney, Scott Cox, said Katina Powell is “a whore. She is interested in making money.”

The school has responded with a statement of its own and claims it had no knowledge of the meetings between Katina Powell, Andre McGee, and the recruits and players.

“The University of Louisville first learned of these allegations when the Indianapolis Business Journal contacted the University’s sports information department seeking comment in late August,” the statement reads. “… The University, on its own initiative, notified the NCAA Enforcement Staff regarding this matter and has been in regular communication with them.”

In the book, Katina Powell and Dick Cady claim that the school gave them a statement which said that an outside expert had been hired to investigate Katina’s allegations. The statement asked for more details and said that if any misconduct were found by University employees, then the school would deal with it “swiftly and severely.”

Head basketball coach Rick Pitino claims to have had no knowledge of Katina Powell’s claims and said the allegations made him “sick to my stomach.”

Publisher Patricia Keiffner said in the IBJ release that the story needs to be told, no matter how graphic or bad it may make Katina Powell look. Katina Powell doesn’t have any remorse for the choices she’s made in her life, but she wants people to know how kids are being recruited into college basketball.

[Photos by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images Sport; IBJ Book Publishing]